The 27th was one of three infantry regiments that made up the 5th Marine Division (the 26th and 28th being the other two, each with about four thousand men). The 26th Marines had deployed to Vietnam the year before and, at that very moment, was entering Marine Corps lore with its heroic stand, halfway around the world, at a surrounded remote fire base called Khe Sanh.
Even more unsettling was that everyone sitting in the entire convoy of trucks had on his helmet and flak jacket. They were holding onto M16 rifles between their legs, the muzzles pointed up. The trucks and the men inside them looked like they meant business. This was no training exercise! They were loaded for bear, packed full of men and equipment. A major infantry unit was definitely mounting out—but where? And more important, why? What had happened in the world that we weren’t yet unaware of?
As the last truck drove out of sight, the rumor machine began hitting on all eight cylinders. What would warrant such a rapid deployment of America’s best? You had to be dead not to feel the hairs tingling on the backs of our necks. We tried to evaluate everything we knew. The most mundane occurrences had us looking for profound implications.
In 1968, the world situation was a potential tinderbox, and rumors ran rampant. Speculations had those loaded trucks being shipped out on forays to all sorts of destinations, each with its own logical justification. Only two weeks earlier, North Korea had seized the USS Pueblo. The Tet Offensive in South Vietnam had just begun. Television footage had shown us fighting inside the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Another rumor had us going up to Los Angeles to put down riots in Watts, but this was the wrong time of year for that sort of thing. Other little hot spots, all around the world, could flare up in a heartbeat: Korea, Cuba, and Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off the Chinese mainland that were sporadically shelled by the Red Chinese. And of course, there was NATO and its Iron Curtain nemesis, the Warsaw Pact, and the always-volatile Middle East.
Our speculations were brought back to earth when we were ordered to return to class. Just as we started inside, a Marine whom none of us knew walked past and gave us a tidbit that shook us to the bone.
“The base has been closed to all outgoing traffic!” he said. “I just got that from an SP!”
“They can’t close it,” someone said in disbelief. “There’s too many Marines and civilians living off base!”
“They’re rounding up anyone on liberty in Oceanside,” the stranger volunteered, “telling them to get back to their units immediately!”
Oceanside was the town just outside Camp Pendleton. For many of us, it was often the first stop on a weekend pass, our first link to the sanity of the outside civilian world, and it was now off limits! He said the SPs—the Shore Patrol—were cruising the streets, entering every bar and eatery, sending anyone with crewcuts (remember, this was the long-haired 1960s) back to the base and to their units, on the double.
What had begun as a cold morning was warming up in more ways than one. As soon as we got back in the classroom, we shared this latest scuttlebutt with Staff Sergeant Lewis. “Pendleton is closed,” he confirmed. “I just heard it from my office people.”
Our first question was, “When was the last time they closed the base?” We hoped the practice wasn’t unusual. Secretly, of course, we all knew better.
“I’ve never heard of it being closed except during the mount-out for Korea, back in nineteen-fifty. Speaking of Korea,” he added, trying to retreat into his history lesson, “Who said, ‘Retreat? Hell, no! We’re just attacking in another direction!’?”
Nobody heard him. We were all someplace else again, busy processing his latest morseclass="underline" The last time they shut down the base was Korea. So whatever was going down must be of a similar magnitude. Who had been invaded? Who needed rescuing? We were desperate for a radio or any communication with the outside world.
We didn’t get too long to wonder about it. We all jumped in our seats to a sound that should have been familiar by then and turned to see the sergeant major making another grand entrance, clipboard in hand.
Staff Sergeant Lewis silently stepped aside.
Uppermost in our minds were two questions: Who’s next? and Will it be me? If not in that order. A small part of me wanted to be on the sergeant major’s clipboard, just to find out what was going on. On the other hand, maybe staying in Southern California wasn’t such a bad deal after all. I slid down in my seat.
He called off three names. We were all tank crewmen. I was now caught up in whatever it was that was going down.
In some way, it was a relief. Now maybe I could get a few answers to the thousand questions on my mind.
The three of us packed our gear and waited for the base bus to take us back to Las Flores and the 5th Tank Battalion. As soon as we climbed the steps of the bus, we asked the driver what was going on. He had nothing to tell us, but he did confirm that the entire base was in a state of more hectic activity than he’d ever seen.
We glued our faces to the windows, looking for any clue as to what was going on. Traffic on the road was unusually heavy, with all sorts of vehicles, including civilian tractor-trailers—an uncommon sight.
The bus let us off and pulled away in a cloud of dust. For a full minute we stood in disbelief, trying to take it all in.
There in front of us was Las Flores, swarming like an ant farm with people and trucks, military and civilian. The heaviest activity was at the rear of the base, up on the ramp where all the tanks were located.
“Whatever it is,” said one of my classmates, “tanks are definitely part of it!”
Spread out before us was a sea of activity, with every individual apparently on his own mission. Civilian trucks were lined up on the road that led up to the tank park. Men were crawling over, in, and out of the seventy tanks that made up 5th Tank Battalion.
A tank park, more commonly referred to as “the ramp,” was a huge expanse of concrete for all the battalion’s tanks. Fifth Tank Battalion was made up of five companies. Four were gun-tank companies, and the fifth was a headquarters company. Each gun-tank company was made up of three platoons, each of which fielded five tanks.
The tanks sat in neatly ordered rows, all precisely aligned. They were always spotless, and their insides even cleaner—which I thought strange, because there was no way to hide dirt in the white-painted interior of the dirtiest dirt-making combat vehicle in the whole Marine Corps. I knew people who wouldn’t buy a car with a white interior because it required too much upkeep. Keeping a tank clean was a full-time job.
Alpha Company had shipped out for Okinawa the year before, but Bravo, Charlie, and Delta Companies were still at Las Flores. Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie were medium gun-tank companies equipped with the M48A3 Patton tank. Delta Company was made up of heavy tanks—M103s. Large as they were useless, they were often called “ramp queens,” because they seldom left the tank ramp. I had been in Charlie Company for the past thirteen months, ever since the day I left Tank School. I loved my job and was very good at it.
Crossing even the roughest of terrain, the 52-ton Patton tank rode every bit as easily as a Cadillac. It was powered by a Continental V-12 turbo-charged diesel engine that developed 750 horsepower. There was nothing like being able to drive something anywhere, over and through anything. For a young kid into cars and performance, it was the ultimate machine. Luckily, diesel fuel was free, because the M48 chugged a hefty two gallons per mile.
The first time I got in the driver’s seat I discovered it had a steering wheel and an automatic transmission; I had been expecting it to drive like a bulldozer, with levers. There wasn’t anywhere we couldn’t go—or so we thought until we heard the stories of returning Vietnam veterans.